Only a Promise

by Mary Balogh

  “I understand,” she said, “that you do not wish to marry but that you must.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and raised one eyebrow. Her impertinence knew no bounds. Though she was quite correct—she had not been eavesdropping. She had been in the drawing room by right of the fact that she was a guest here.

  “I do not believe it is just your youth, is it?” she asked.

  He raised the other eyebrow to join the first.

  “That makes you reluctant, I mean,” she said. “It is not just that you are young and wish for more time to sow some wild oats before you settle down. It is not, is it?”

  He felt a curious mixture of urges. One part of him wanted to bellow with laughter. Another part wanted to explode with fury.

  “I believe,” she continued when he remained silent, “it is as you told the duchess. You have nothing to offer beyond what almost every single girl in the land and her mama want. I am not expressing myself very well, am I? But I know what I mean, and you know. There is nothing left inside you to offer, is there? Something has taken it all away. War, perhaps. And you are empty.”

  He had turned cold. It was still quite early morning, of course, and he was standing in the shade of the tree away from what heat there was in the sun. But it was not that. It was not an outer coldness.

  “You presume to know me inside and out, do you, Miss Muirhead,” he said, his voice matching his feelings, “after . . . what is it? An eighteen-hour acquaintance?”

  “I do not know you at all,” she said. “I believe you have made yourself unknowable.”

  “But you have concluded that I am empty.” He looked contemptuously at her. She did not even have the decency to look uncomfortable, apart from those gripping hands. “Therefore you believe you must know all there is to know of me.”

  “How inadequate words are,” she said, shaking her head slightly. “However it is, Lord Berwick, you need a wife and you are dreading the thought of going back to London to search for one in the ballrooms and other haunts of the ton.”

  “Dreading.” He laughed. “How foolish I would be if that were true, Miss Muirhead. I am, without exaggeration and without conceit, one of the most eligible men in the land. Young ladies—beautiful, rich, well-born young ladies—already cluster hopefully in my vicinity. They will positively swarm when it becomes clear that I am ready to make my choice among them.”

  “Young ladies,” she said. “I suppose you mean straight from the schoolroom. Poor girls—as you yourself observed last night. The one you choose is not likely to remain happy for long, is she?”

  “Because I look like this?” He flicked the fingers of one hand in the direction of his scarred cheek. “Or because I have an empty soul?”

  He did not know why he was enduring this conversation.

  “Because you have nothing to offer,” she said. “Nothing that would make a young, hopeful, innocent girl happy after the euphoria of the wedding is over.”

  “A countess’s title, with the prospect of a duchess’s to follow, will not make her eternally ecstatic?” he asked. “And taking precedence over almost every other lady in England for the rest of her life? Having wealth untold at her fingertips? And all the clothes and carriages and jewels and other faradiddle she could ever dream of?”

  “I know by the tone of your voice that you agree with me,” she told him.

  He laughed again. “You think I will be a cruel husband, Miss Muirhead?”

  “Probably not knowingly,” she said.

  Well, he thought irritably, it was nice to be known, to be understood. He wondered idly if anything ever shook her calm, if she ever lived up to the promise of that red hair.

  “You would do better to marry me,” she said.

  What?

  He stood where he was, his arms folded, his eyes riveted upon hers.

  “I am older,” she said, “and well past the age of innocence. I am twenty-seven years old. However, I still have many childbearing years left and have no reason to believe I may be barren. My father is the sixth baronet of his line, and my mother was the daughter of a viscount. I have no illusions about marital happiness and would be quite willing to accept the marriage for what it would be. I would not interfere with your life. I would live mine in a way that would never publicly embarrass you or privately inconvenience you. If you were to agree to marry me, you would be saved from all the bother of making your choice among the many eligible young ladies in whom you have no interest whatsoever.”

  He found his voice at last.

  “I have no interest in you, Miss Muirhead.” It was brutal, but he felt savage—and cold to the heart.

  “Of course you do not,” she said, looking unmoved, though a downward glance showed him that her knuckles had whitened against her shawl. “I would not expect it, or desire it. I am suggesting a mutual . . . bargain, Lord Berwick. Something that would suit us both without hurting either. You need a wife though you do not wish for one. I want a husband but have little chance of finding one. You are not looking for love. Neither am I. I had it once, but it proved deceptive and ridiculously painful. I want marriage because the alternative for a woman is dreary in the extreme. I want my own home and a place in society. I want children—and upon them I will lavish love. You will not disappoint me. I would expect nothing from you beyond what duty would dictate. And I would not disappoint you. You would not expect anything from me beyond duty, and that you would have without question or complaint. You wish to remove to your home in the country after your marriage. Such a retired existence would suit me admirably. I would not be forever begging you to take me to town and all its entertainments.”

  The hair was an illusion, he thought. She was as cold a fish as he had ever encountered.

  Marry her?

  But being married to her would be the next best thing to remaining single. He could not remain single, however. He must marry. She was twenty-seven years old, older than he. She had grown past both youth and innocence. She had loved once. Did that mean . . . ?

  “Are you a virgin, Miss Muirhead?” he asked. Again it was a brutal question. It was also an unnecessarily impertinent one. He was not seriously considering her outrageous proposal, after all. Was he?

  “Yes,” she said, “I am.”

  They stood and stared at each other.

  “Are you related to Graham Muirhead?” he asked her abruptly.

  “He is my brother,” she told him.

  Ah. His eyes strayed to her hair and back to her green eyes. Graham was dark haired and dark eyed, but he was her brother. It was hardly a recommendation in her favor.

  She must have read his thoughts.

  “I am suggesting that you marry me, Lord Berwick,” she said, “not my brother.”

  3

  There was an uncomfortably long silence during which the Earl of Berwick stood where he was, his shoulder propped against the ancient oak, his arms folded over his chest, his booted feet crossed at the ankles. He looked rather menacingly large and . . . dark. He looked dark, of course, because he was in the shadow of the tree, but rather than muting the effect of the scar across his cheek, the dimness accentuated it—and it was the cheek turned more fully toward her.

  There was not a glimmering of humor or any other emotion on his face or in his blank eyes.

  Whatever had made her think she could marry him? Or that he would marry her? He was all brooding, dark emptiness. Even dangerous, though she had not thought that until this moment. For one did not know, would probably never know, what emotions were buried deep inside him, ready to erupt at any moment.

  She wondered what she would do if the silence stretched much longer. Perhaps he had no intention of moving or saying anything. Should she turn and walk away, then? From her last chance? But chance for what? Perhaps marrying him would not after all be more desirable than living the rest of her life as she was,
in dreary but independent spinsterhood.

  He spoke at last.

  “Tell me something, Miss Muirhead,” he said. “If marriage is of such importance to you, even the poor apology for a marriage into which you are proposing to enter with me, why are you still unwed at the age of twenty-seven?”

  Ah.

  Because no one has asked me? It was true. But the answer was not nearly as simple as that.

  “I am ineligible,” she told him, lifting her chin. An understatement if ever she had spoken one.

  “Yet you expect me to marry you?” His eyebrows soared again and he looked more the way she had expected him to look from the start—arrogant and supercilious. “In what way are you ineligible, pray? You have just told me your father is a baronet with a solid lineage and that your mother was the daughter of a viscount. Birth surely counts for something in the marriage mart. And you do not exactly look like a gargoyle.”

  Was that a compliment?

  She drew a slow breath.

  “My sister ran off with a married man six years ago,” she told him. “He married her a year later, a scant three months after his wife died and one month before her confinement, but their marriage restored only a very limited degree of respectability to what had been a very public scandal. She will never be received by any of the highest sticklers in polite society, and we have not been entirely forgiven either, for my father refused to cast her off even when for a few months her seducer abandoned her to return to his dying wife.”

  “We,” he said. “Why, pray, did the scandalous behavior of your sister and the socially unwise reaction of your father make you a pariah, Miss Muirhead?”

  “Well.” She looked down at her fingers, which she had spread out before her as though she were examining her manicure. “The man was the darling of society at the time, wild and eccentric though he was, a playwright of flamboyant appearance and smoldering good looks to rival those of Lord Byron. And his wife was the daughter of a government minister. It could not have been worse. Lucy was seventeen. She had not even made her debut in society. She was in London only because I was making my come-out at the grand age of twenty-one and she had persuaded our mother that she would expire of boredom if she were forced to remain behind in the country with her governess. She met Mr. Nelson in Hyde Park when she dropped her reticule and its contents spilled at his feet while she was walking there one morning with Mama’s maid. His wife’s family made a dreadful fuss after he had run off with her. Her father had Papa expelled from one of his clubs. Her brother forced a quarrel upon my brother in a public place and challenged him to a duel. Graham refused to fight.”

  The earl interrupted the ghastly narrative.

  “Did he, by Jove?” he said. “But, yes, I suppose he would.”

  “Oh, he kept the appointment,” she said, looking up at him with a frown, “but he would not take up one of the pistols. He walked off the paces at the signal and turned and stood, his arms at his sides. Apparently he did not even stand sideways to offer a narrower target. His adversary bent his arm at the elbow and shot into the air, and everyone jeered at Graham for his cowardice, though I still think it was the bravest thing I have ever heard of. My mother insisted that we try to weather the storm while Papa went in pursuit of the runaways and Graham tried in vain to apologize to Mrs. Nelson and her family. We attended those entertainments to which we had already been invited, but new invitations stopped coming. When Mama took me calling upon ladies who had always welcomed us, they were suddenly not at home even if other people’s carriages were drawn up outside their doors to give the lie to their words. When we arrived at Almack’s one evening for the weekly ball, it was to the discovery that our vouchers had been revoked.”

  There was a brief silence. “Why were you twenty-one when you made your come-out?”

  “My grandmother died when I was eighteen,” she explained, “and Mama insisted we go into strict mourning, though Papa said it surely was not necessary to ruin the plans that had been made for me. My mother was very ill for a couple of years after that. It was the illness that finally killed her, though she did rally to take me to London for my long-overdue debut into society.”

  “And you never went back to London after that first time?” he asked. “Not in six years? Memories are notoriously short among the beau monde. Yesterday’s scandal is soon swallowed up by today’s indiscretion and that by tomorrow’s catastrophe. And it was not you who had eloped. Who was the man you loved?”

  His eyes raked over her from head to toe and she clutched the ends of her shawl again.

  “What?”

  “You told me you had known love once,” he reminded her, “but that it had proved deceptive and painful.”

  Ah.

  “He was wealthy and titled and handsome,” she said without really answering his question, “and attentive from the moment of our introduction at my very first ball. He seemed like a dream come true, and of course I tumbled into love with him as though I did not have a brain in my head. But why would I not have done? Mama encouraged the connection. We danced at almost every ball and sat beside each other at concerts. We conversed at soirees and strolled together at picnics. I was in theater parties that included him. He paid me lavish compliments and even declared a lasting affection for me. My head was thoroughly turned. I expected every day that he would speak formally with my father and I would be the happiest girl in the world. I call myself a girl because that was what I was then even though I was twenty-one years of age. I thought he loved me. And indeed I was the envy of many other young ladies of my acquaintance.”

  She paused to draw a deep breath and let it out on a sigh.

  “There was a ball a week or so after Lucy ran away with Mr. Nelson. Mama and I went despite everything. I was engaged to dance the opening set with the man who had so recently paid court to me. He approached as expected when the time came and smiled dazzlingly as he made a flourishing bow and held out his hand toward . . . the lady standing next to me. It was a very deliberate cut, and of course every eye in the ballroom was upon me. Everyone saw me smile with happy relief after such a distressing week and step forward and begin to stretch out my own hand.”

  She had to stop for a moment to draw a steadying breath.

  “We packed our bags that night, Mama and I,” she said, “and went home the next day. Love is a strange phenomenon, my lord. It can die so abruptly and so completely that one sees it immediately for the empty illusion it is.”

  “But painful,” he reminded her.

  “At the time,” she admitted. “But I got over it. I survived. And it was a lesson well learned. You need not be afraid that I will ever turn sentimental and imagine myself in love with you—if you should choose to accept my bargain, that is.”

  “A survivor,” he said softly. “You did not ever go back?”

  “Yes, I did.” She half smiled. “Last year. I went at the persuasion of my aunt, Lady Easterly, who was feeling lonely with all her daughters, my cousins, married and scattered about the country. She told me exactly what you just told me, that the collective memory of the ton is short. And five years had gone by. I attended a few concerts and soirees with her. I had agreed to accompany her to some parties and even one ball that was being given by a cousin of my uncle’s. But suddenly the gossip began, strange whisperings and significant glances my way. I thought at first it must be the old scandal rearing its head, but it was something else. Something totally unexpected and terribly silly. Aunt Julia told me what it was about one morning when I was getting ready to go out to the library. And Graham arrived soon after to confirm what she had said.”

  She clasped her hands behind her back. She closed her eyes for a moment before opening them and continuing.

  “I daresay,” she said, “that if you were in London last spring you met Lady Angela Allandale, daughter of the Marquess of Hitching? She had come from the north of England to make he
r debut and took the ton by storm.”

  She risked a glance at him.

  “I remember hearing she was a diamond of the first water,” he said, “with half the bachelor population of England dangling after her. I never saw her. I made sure not to. At that time I was still avoiding all possible danger of being trapped into marriage.”

  “She had hair and eyes the exact color and shade of mine,” she said. “She had my pale complexion too. When a few people began to remark upon the likeness between us, there were those among the older members of the ton who remembered the handsome, red-haired marquess, her father, as a young man in London, paying court to the lovely Miss West, my mother, before financial distress caused him to change his affections and propose marriage to the heiress of a vast fortune who is now the Marchioness of Hitching.”

  The Earl of Berwick offered no comment when she paused.

  “My mother and father married before the end of that Season,” she said. “Mama always spoke of their whirlwind courtship as a great love story. I did not believe any of the gossip that was soon in full flight last year. I still do not. I tried to brazen it out, just as I had five years before. But at a picnic I attended with my aunt, I had the misfortune of coming face to face with Lord— I came face to face with my former beau and greeted him by name. He raised his quizzing glass to his eye, looked pointedly through it at my hair, made me a slight and distant bow, and walked away, making sure I heard the remark he made to the gentleman who was with him. The word bastard was part of it. I went home the next day.”

  She had been standing too long in the same position, she realized. There was a buzzing in her ears, a coldness about her head and in her nostrils, and she feared she was close to fainting. She drew breath, shook her head, looked about, dug her fingers into her palms, and willed herself not to do anything so utterly humiliating.

  “And you confronted your father?” Lord Berwick asked.

  “No,” she admitted. “I told him a few weeks in London had been enough, that I had been bored and homesick. The gossip followed me eventually, however. Some people who were staying with our neighbors over Christmas recognized me at a local assembly, and the story spread like wildfire until it reached Papa’s ears. He was incensed. He . . . made a scene. He was stopped only just in time from challenging one of the visitors to a duel. We went home early, and then I asked him. He would not give me a direct answer. He told me he had loved my mother from the time he first set eyes upon her and that she had loved him. He told me he had always loved me, before my birth and every day after. I was his firstborn, his beloved elder daughter, he said. He told me there were some redheads among his ancestors. But he was vague about exactly when he had married Mama—I did not know the date, I realized—and I did not press the point or make any attempt to find out another way. I was born the February after that Season. I do not believe the gossip. But you ought to be aware of it, I suppose. If you are considering my proposed bargain, that is. Which I do not suppose you are.”